The eighth chapter to "Rain." If you'd like, you may read the first seven chapters here: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic13668.html
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Chapter 8: Of Coats and Cars
Amelia:
It was the kind of dream that was burry the whole way through. Every face, every voice, every setting, even her own body, everything was fuzzy and muffled. She was even dazed in the dream enough not have any idea what was happening. Amelia could only make out that she was on what seemed to be a balcony overlooking an intersection on a sunny day. Leaning on the rails was a person wearing a black long-sleeved shirt. The person’s face was too blurry to have any defined facial features, and it’s voice too muffled to be recognized, but she could tell that the person had short hair and decided that it was a he.
He said something too soft to be heard, and walked back into the room where Amelia was. Judging by the décor of the room, she saw it as a hotel room. The man was met with what seemed to be another girl, who hugged him before saying something to Amelia and laughing. Amelia felt invisible, yet at the same time, involved in the conversation. She seemed to answer to them and feel the joy of laughter with them, yet not even understand what anyone said due to the muffled voices.
She felt as if she didn’t belong with them. While she did her best to walk out of the room, she was stopped by a tall young man, different from the first one. This one was much clearer than the first two people. Amelia looked down from his face, as if embarrassed, and noticed that her own form had sharpened in detail. Before she could look up at the new person’s face, everything went white, and she forgot everything in an instant.
Craig:
“Remind me why you brought her here, pal,” Jacky said as she struggled to balance on the foothold of a zip line, only to somehow hang upside down with her leg stuck through the loop.
“It was the closest place with a decent bed,” Craig said as he lifted her out of the tangled ropes that were strewn around his home. “You guys should be thanking me. You had a place to stay last night.”
Sean came down from above on a descending rope and said, “I’ve thanked you at least a thousand times! This place deserves no less! This rope system is awesome!”
“Yeah, thanks. Anyway, won’t you guys get into trouble for staying the night here?”
Richard was laying on the ripped and torn cushions of the couch in the middle of the room. “I called my parents and told them I was spending the night at Sean’s.”
“And I’m spending the night at his house, apparently,” Sean said.
“And I’m at Amelia’s,” Jacky said, “And Amelia’s at my house. Her dad wasn’t too happy when I told him, but he’ll get over it.”
“Speaking of which, where’re your parents, Craig?” Sean asked before pulling on another rope, which forcibly hauled him up to another part of the building.
Craig shouted up to him, “They’re out on our monthly grocery shopping! You guys have to leave before they get back!”
“Got it!” Sean said after he disappeared up on a higher floor.
Craig grimaced at the young man and grabbed a separate rope. “I’ll go check on Amelia. If she’s not awake, I’ll wake her up myself.”
Jacky snorted, “Good luck with that. She was out like a light last night. Hell, I screamed right into her ear, and she didn’t even twitch!”
“I’m fine with that,” Craig said as he pulled on the rope, which pulled him up through gaping holes in several floors above him, and dropped him outside the trap door that led to his room. It felt surprisingly routine to him. He always went to his room to either smoke or sleep, but never to wake up a girl he’d left there the night before. Before he could flip the switch for the door to open, a hand from the inside forced the door open, sending splinters and dust flying everywhere along with a distinct ‘hi-ya!’. Craig jumped back as Amelia emerged from the hole, a large bandage on her left temple. She wore a distressed look, as well as the same clothes that she wore the night before, and scanned the area around her until her eyes fell on Craig, and looked up at his face.
“Have a nice sleep, miss?” He asked, crossing his arms with a smirk.
“Where the hell am I? What time is it?” Amelia shouted as she hauled herself out of the hole.
“My house, Saturday morning around ten.” Craig said flatly.
She stared at him in disbelief. “Why the hell didn’t you take me home, you idiot!” The girl rushed and pushed him out of the way, running down the small hallway in the direction in which she thought the exit was.
Without warning, Craig grabbed her arm and said, “You hit your head. You really shouldn’t be running around right now,” as he dragged her back towards his room against her will.
“Shut up! I need to get home!” She batted at his arm as best she could, only to make her dizzy and slouch against the wall. Craig let go and looked down at her with an “I told you so,” expression.
“The last time you said that, you hit your head and went into a coma for eight hours. Why don’t you try listening for once?”
Amelia looked up at him, and said in defeat, “Fine. I’m already dead, anyway… My dad‘s gonna kill me.”
“Not yet, actually. Jacky said that she told him you slept over at her house.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Everyone’s created an alibi for themselves. Hurray for cell phones.”
“Okay, but why the hell am I here?”
“It was the closest spot to where you fell. Me and Richard managed to carry you.” Craig helped her slowly get to her feet, and showed her down the ladder to the nearest couch on that floor, which happened to be in his small, perfectly square room. She slumped onto it and let out a deep sigh.
She looked around the room, noticing the lack of stuff, the distinct smell of smoke that hovered around them, and the sound of the rain beating down on the outer walls of the rickety building.
“So this is where you live? Do you live alone?”
“Yes and no. I live here, and my parents are just gone for today. Lucky for us, too. They’d have been pissed.”
“Why?”
“They just don’t like it when people find out where we live. It’s kind of a secret. We hide it so that nobody tries to pull anything on us.” He sat on the floor with his back against the couch. “What about you? Do you live in some kind of fancy house?”
“Uh… kind of. It’s medium-sized. Just my dad and me live there.”
“You lost me at ‘medium.’”
“Oh, uh, two stories with a basement and an attic.”
“Ah. We have five floors from the top floor down to the sixth in this eleven-story building. The bottom six floors are supposed to make people think nobody lives here.”
Amelia only just then noticed that they had electricity by looking up at the light bulb that hung from the center of the ceiling.
“If this place is abandoned, then how does it still have electricity?”
“We have our ways.”
Though she was annoyed at his cryptic way of telling her, she let it go and laid down on the couch. “I’ve just realized that we know next to nothing about each other.”
“Makes sense. We’ve know each other for, what, a week?”
She counted her fingers and said, “actually, eight days.”
“Same damn thing.” He then remembered something. “Oh, and you’re still wearing my coat. Give it.”
She only just then noticed it still on her, and said, “You gave it to me when we met, remember? I told you myself that I wouldn’t ever give it back.”
“You were lying.”
“I was?”
“You were? Okay, give it back, then.”
Amelia held in a laugh and looked away.
“Actually… I really like it, so is it okay if I keep it?”
Craig growled in annoyance, “Will you just give it the hell back already! Everything I own isn’t disposable like yours!”
Amelia, surprised at his shouting, sat up abruptly and said, “Not everything I have is disposable, either, you know!”
“Oh, like you can’t just go out and buy another ten of anything you have! Rich idiots like you disgust me! You never think about what other people need, you just hide in a corner and count your money while everyone wastes away!”
Amelia planted her bare foot hard into the side of his head, her cheeks red with anger.
“How dare you! If I were some rich idiot like you say, would I really be spending my time in a dump like this? I don’t even know why I wanted your stupid coat anymore! Take it!” She took the trench coat off and threw it at his head, making a slapping sound against his face.
“About damn time! Why’d you even waste my time like that, huh?”
“Just shut up, you idiot!”
There was a silence between them, until Amelia finally plopped back onto the couch with an annoyed sigh. “So, when can I go home?”
“When you can stay awake for more than thirty minutes at a time.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
The tension between them was enough to give the both of them the chills. Craig crossed his legs on the floor as he lit a cigarette with his coat laid out on his lower half as a kind of blanket. Amelia fell asleep again after about another twenty minutes.
Amelia:
“So, have any dreams?” Jacky asked Amelia as they walked down the sidewalks of their neighborhood. It was already afternoon by that time, and their area was only partly cloudy.
“None that I can really remember,” Amelia said, scratching the spot on her head with the bandage on it. “Why didn’t you guys wake me up when I fell asleep again?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Sean said, still wearing his raincoat, but had put his umbrella away.
“Come on, she and Craig were having a moment!” Jacky said with a laugh.
“More like a fight,” Richard said, scratching the back of his head.
“Either way,” Sean said, “We need to go back there again. That rope system was fun as all hell!”
“Agreed,” Jacky and Richard said at the same time.
“Let’s go back there next weekend!”
Amelia turned to him and said, “You guys can go, but I sure as hell won’t.”
“What, did the guy touch a nerve?” Jacky taunted.
“Hardly. I just don’t like him anymore. When we talked his reasons for yelling at me were completely unfounded. That, and his room smells like a cigar shop.”
“Oh, that’s not shallow at all.”
“You’ve barely known him for a week, so give him another chance,” Sean said.
“Yeah, and you were pretty stubborn about the coat thing, so the fight was kinda your fault,” Richard said.
Amelia sighed, “Will you guys just leave me alone?”
“Now you’re just being stubborn.”
It wasn’t long before they got back to the school parking lot, where they had left their cars. Richard ran over to his brown, cheap-looking Jeep and unlocked it. Sean owned a small white Mercedes, and Jacky went over to the bike rack to get her effectively locked-up Vespa. It was yellow with a black star on the front of it. All of the cars were parked in generally the same area of the long parking lot.
Sean glanced over at Amelia’s car, which was behind Richard’s, and his eyes widened in disbelief. “Uh… Amelia…?”
She was over by Richard’s car when she looked over the hood of the Jeep and noticed her own car with shock. Her red New Bug’s wind shield was broken through with a chunk of asphalt from the edge of the parking lot, and the doors were beaten in so far that it would be impossible to open. The rest of the car’s red paint was all but scratched off. Rain water had poured into the interior all night, and the leather seats were completely ruined. Different colored water-proof spray paint spelled out, “slut,” and “whore,” and other words all over the hood, doors, and retractable roof, which had been ripped off and tossed to the side.
Jacky motored over to them, ready to say goodbye, only to fall silent at the sight. Amelia’s face went pale, and she slowly walked towards the car, as if approaching a wild animal. She touched one of the rear-view mirrors, only to have it fall off and hit the concrete with a clatter.
After a time, Amelia looked up at her friends with a blank expression and said, “My dad will really kill me this time, won‘t he…?”
Silence ensued, nobody saying a word at all.
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That odd dream sequence at the beginning was actually inspired by a dream of my own, though I don't remember what it was about at all. It was fun to write everyone's reaction to Craig's 'house,' but I don't think that I conveyed their feelings about it too well. Craig and Amelia's fight is still kind of iffy, so I may change it later.
Critiques are appreciated. =3
I was slightly put off by it. Like, what exactly was happening? You probably should clear that up for the reader and not make it so elusive.
